Overall pesticide-related illnesses, including those stemming from non-agricultural exposure, were up 10 percent over the prior year. DPR’s latest Pesticide Illness Report documented 1,187 cases in 2015, a third of them agricultural. Drift was to blame for most of the agricultural incidents, including one in Kern County that sickened 82 workers.

Monterey County’s 89 agricultural pesticide illnesses and injuries were third most in the entire state only to Fresno County’s 102 and Kern County’s 98 cases. Monterey County saw a 370 percent increase in such pesticide illnesses above 2014.

Interestingly, the report shows that, even when workers followed federal and state regulations, hundreds of people were still harmed.

The report discusses 167 incidents involving 209 people that experienced negative health effects related to pesticide exposure despite compliance with regulations and the instructions on the label.

“This indicates that current pesticide regulations are not working to protect children and farmworkers from acute health harms,” said Charisse Yenko, a registered nurse in Salinas. “But it’s worse than what this report says, because what’s missing is the fact that long-term exposure to even tiny amounts of pesticides can create permanent health harms in our people, even before we are out of the womb.”

Pesticide drift sickened 97 children and staff at schools in 2015, nearly a four-fold increase from 2014, according to the report.

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